Clarence Thomas is going to decide whether to get Ginni off the hook. For old time’s sake

What would be a more blatant violation of the Supreme Court’s shiny new judicial code than this? Getting a check from a party before the court with “For Valuable Consideration” in the memo line?

In the coming months, Thomas will have to decide whether his wife’s text messages around and participation in the very same insurrection for which Trump is being removed from the Colorado primary ballot mean he should recuse himself from that case. He will allow himself to pass judgment on whether her subsequent insistence that the 2020 election was stolen might just make it improper for him to hear the Colorado case. The new code of conduct recently embraced (no, really) by the court requires that the justices disqualify themselves from an appeal if their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” Moreover, justices should be mindful as to whether their spouse has “an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding” or is “likely to be a material witness in the proceeding.” We know Thomas is capable of applying this test to himself in theory because, for reasons unknown, he removed himself from a case last October involving John Eastman, principal architect of one of the key legal plots to keep Trump in power. But will he do the same when the stakes are much, much higher? And why on God’s Earth is he being permitted to decide these high-stakes questions at all?

Because our system of government is breaking down and doesn’t make a lick of sense any more on multiple levels?

And the January 6 cases are just one part of the various pieces of litigation that will give John Roberts and the Furious Five, featuring Leonard Leo and the Originalists (am I doing this right kids?) yet another opportunity to more or less decide who gets to be president, and perhaps choose some of their own successors, 23 years after four of their predecessors, plus the apparently immortal as well as immoral Thomas, J., took us down this long and winding road the first time.